WARWICK FOR KING HENRY
The peace between Warwick and King Edward lasted for a period even
shorter than might have been expected; seven months, from September
1469 to March 1470, was the term for which it was destined to endure.
Yet while it did hold firm, all was so smooth outwardly that its
rupture came as a thunderclap upon the world. Nothing, indeed, could
have looked more promising for lovers of quiet times than the events of
the winter of 1469-70. A Parliament ratified all the King's grants of
immunity to the insurgents of the last year, and while it sat the King
announced a project which promised to bind York and Neville more firmly
together than ever. Edward, though now married for six years, had no
son; three daughters alone were the issue of his union with Elizabeth
Woodville. He now proposed to marry his eldest daughter, and heiress
presumptive, to the male heir of the Nevilles, the child George, son of
Montagu.[14] To make the boy's rank suitable to his prospects, Edward
created him Duke of Bedford. Montagu had not joined with his brothers
in the rising, and had even fought with Robin of Redesdale, so it was
all the easier for the King to grant him this crowning honour.
In February Warwick was at Warwick Castle, Montagu in the North, while
Clarence and King Edward lay at London. All was quiet enough, when
suddenly there came news of troubles in Lincolnshire. Riotous bands,
headed by Sir Robert Welles, son of Lord Willoughby and Welles, had
come together, sacked the manor of a certain Sir Thomas Burgh, one of
Edward's most trusted servants, and were raising the usual seditious
cries about the evil government of the realm. At first nothing very
dangerous seemed to be on foot. When the King sent for Willoughby, to
call him to account for his son's doings, the old peer came readily
enough to London to make his excuses, relying on the safe conduct
which was sent him. But the riots were now swelling into a regular
insurrection, and soon news came that Sir Robert Welles had called out
the whole shire-force of Lincoln, mustered fifteen thousand men, and
was bidding his troops to shout for King Henry. Edward at once issued
commissions of array for raising an overwhelming force against the
rebels. Two of the commissions were sent to Warwick and Clarence, who
were bidden to collect the men of Warwickshire and Worcestershire.
Their orders were dated March 7th, but before they were half carried
out, the purpose for which they were issued had already been attained.
Edward, taking Lord Willoughby with him as a hostage, had rushed north
with one of these astonishing bursts of energy of which he was now and
again capable. Leaving London on the 6th, he reached Stamford on March
11th, with the forces of the home and eastern counties at his back.
On the 12th he met the rebels at Empingham near Stamford, and when
Welles would not bid them disperse, beheaded his aged father Willoughby
in front of his army. The Lincolnshire men fled in disgraceful rout
before the fire of the King's artillery, casting off their cassocks
with the colours of Welles in such haste that the fight was known as
Lose-coat Field. Sir Robert was caught and beheaded at Doncaster a
few days later, and the rising was at an end. On Tuesday the 21st the
King reviewed his troops: "It was said that never were seen in England
so many goodly men, and so well arrayed for a fight; in especial the
Duke of Norfolk was worshipfully accompanied, no lord there so well."
Warwick and Clarence, with a few thousand men from the shires they
had been told to raise, lay that day at Chesterfield, converging, in
accordance with their orders, on Lincoln.
Suddenly Edward announced to his army that he had learnt from the
dying confession of Sir Robert Welles that Warwick and Clarence were
implicated in the rising. Though Welles had sometimes used King Henry's
name, it was now said that he had really been proposing to place
Clarence on the throne, and was acting with Warwick's full approval.
Edward added that he had already sent to the Duke and the Earl, bidding
them come to his presence at once and unaccompanied. They had refused
to come without a safe conduct, so he now proclaimed them traitors, but
would grant them their lives if they would appear before him in humble
and obeisant wise within a week. The army was at once directed to march
on Chesterfield, but when the proclamation reached Warwick and Clarence
they did not obey it, and fled for their lives.
This series of events is the most puzzling portion of the whole of
Warwick's life. The chroniclers help us very little, and the only two
first-hand documents which we possess are official papers drawn up
by King Edward. These papers were so widely spread that we meet them
repeated word for word and paragraph for paragraph even in the French
writers,--with the names, of course, horribly mangled.[15] Edward said
that down to the very moment of Welles' capture he had no thought but
that Warwick and Clarence were serving him faithfully: it was Welles'
confession, and some treasonable papers found on the person of a squire
in the Duke of Clarence's livery who was slain in the pursuit, that
revealed the plot to him. The second document which the King published
was Welles' confession, a rambling effusion which may or may not fully
represent the whole story. Why Welles should confess at all we cannot
see, unless he expected to save his life thereby; and if he expected to
save his life he would, of course, insert in his tale whatever names
the King chose. Welles' narrative relates that all Lincolnshire was
afraid that the King would visit it with vengeance for joining Robin
of Redesdale last year. Excitement already prevailed, when there came
to him, about February 2nd, Sir John Clare, a chaplain of the Duke
of Clarence's, who asked him if Lincolnshire would be ready to rise
supposing there was another trouble this year, but bade him make no
stir till the Duke should send him word. Without waiting, according
to his own tale, for any further communication, Welles raised all
Lincolnshire, making proclamation in the King's name as well as that of
the Duke of Clarence. Some days after the riots began there came to him
a squire in the Duke's livery, who told him that he had provoked the
King, and that great multitudes of the Commons must needs die unless
they bestirred themselves. So this squire--Welles could not give his
surname but only knew that he was called Walter--took over the guiding
of the host till he was slain at Stamford. Moreover, one John Wright
came to Lincoln, bearing a ring as token, which he said belonged to the
Earl of Warwick, with a message of comfort to say that the Earl had
sworn to take such part as Lincolnshire should take. "And I understand
that they intended to make great risings, and as far as ever I could
understand, to the intent to make the Duke of Clarence King, and so it
was largely noised in our host." According to his story, Welles had
never seen either Warwick or Clarence himself, and had no definite
knowledge of their purpose. He only understood that the purpose was to
crown Clarence; all his information came from Clare and the anonymous
squire.
This is a curious tale, and suggests many doubts. If Warwick wished
to act again the comedy of last year, why should he send to a county
where he had no influence, to a staunch Lancastrian family (Welles'
grandfather fell in Henry's cause at Towton, and his father was the
Willoughby who tried to kidnap Warwick in 1460) in order to provoke a
rising? And if he had planned a rising in Lincoln, why did he make no
attempt to support it by calling out his own Midland and South Welsh
retainers, or raising Yorkshire or Kent, where he could command the
whole county? That the Earl was capable of treasonable double-dealing
he had shown clearly enough in 1469. But was he capable of such insane
bad management as the arrangements for Welles' insurrection show? Last
year his own relatives and retainers worked the plan, and it was most
accurately timed and most successfully executed. Why should he now make
such a bungle?
It is, moreover, to be observed that while Welles puts everything down
to Clarence in his confession, Warkworth and other chroniclers say that
he bade his men shout for King Henry, and all his connections were
certainly Lancastrian. Is it possible that he was trying to put the
guilt off his own shoulders, and to make a bid for his life, acting on
Edward's hints, when he implicated Warwick and Clarence in his guilt?
It is certainly quite in keeping with Edward's character to suppose
that, finding himself at the head of a loyal and victorious army, it
suddenly occurred to him that his position could be utilised to fall on
Warwick and Clarence and take his revenge for the deaths of Pembroke
and Rivers.
Whether this was so or not, the Duke and the Earl were most certainly
caught unprepared when Edward marched on Chesterfield. They left a
message that they would come to the King if he would give them a
safe conduct, and fled to Manchester. Edward threw his army between
them and York, where they could have raised men in abundance, and
the fugitives, after vainly trying to interest Lord Stanley in their
cause, doubled back on the Midlands. With a few hundred men in their
train they got to Warwick, but apparently there was no time to make a
stand even there. The King had sent commissions of array out all over
England to trusty hands, and forces under staunch Yorkists were closing
in towards the Midlands on every side. Edward calculated on having an
enormous army in the field by April; he himself was coming south with
quite twenty thousand victorious troops, and he had called out the
whole of the levies of Shropshire, Hereford, Gloucester, Stafford,
Wiltshire, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset. When he heard that Warwick was
moving south, he sent to Salisbury to order quarters and provisions for
forty thousand men, who would be concentrated there if the Earl tried
to reach the Montacute lands in that quarter.
So unprepared was the Earl for the assault that, packing up his
valuables in Warwick Castle, and taking with him his wife and his two
daughters, he fled for the South Coast without waiting to be surrounded
by his enemies. He quite outstripped the King, who had barely reached
Salisbury when he himself was at Exeter. There the Duke and Earl
seized a few ships, which they sent round to Dartmouth; more vessels
were obtained in the latter place, for the whole seafaring population
of England favoured the Earl. When Edward drew near, Warwick and his
son-in-law went on board their hastily-extemporised fleet and put
to sea. They ran along the South Coast as far as Southampton, where
they made an attempt to seize a part of the royal navy, including the
great ship called the _Trinity_, which had lain there since Scales'
abortive expedition in 1469. But Scales and Howard occupied the town
with a great Hampshire levy; the Earl's attack failed, and three of his
ships with their crews fell into the enemy's hands. Tiptoft Earl of
Worcester, "the great butcher of England," tried the captured men, and
a squire named Clapham and nineteen more were hung and then impaled by
him. This atrocious punishment sent a shock of horror through England,
and Tiptoft's name is still remembered rather for this abomination than
for all the learning and accomplishments which made him Caxton's idol.
Warwick made for Calais, where his friend Wenlock was in charge,
expecting free admittance. But the King had sent Galliard de Duras
and other officers across to watch the governor, and Wenlock, who was
somewhat of a time-server, dared not show his heart. When Warwick
appeared in the roads he refused him entry, and shot off some harmless
cannon toward the ships. At the same time he sent the Earl a secret
message that "he would give him a fair account of Calais upon the first
opportunity, if he would betake himself to France and wait." While
Warwick lay off Calais his daughter, Clarence's wife, was delivered of
a son. Wenlock sent out for her use two flagons of wine, but would not
give her a safe conduct to land--"a great severity for a servant to use
towards his lord," remarks Commines.
Repulsed from Calais, though we hear that the majority of the garrison
and inhabitants wished to admit them, Warwick and Clarence turned back,
and sought refuge in the harbour of Honfleur, where they trusted to get
shelter from Louis of France. On their way between Calais and Honfleur
they made prizes of several ships belonging to the Duke of Burgundy,
because they understood that he was arming against them. Louis kept
away from Warwick for a time; but he sent his secretary, Du Plessis, to
see him, and his admiral, the Bastard of Bourbon, gave the fugitives a
hearty welcome. Louis was still at war with England, and still dreading
a descent by King Edward on the French coast. He was delighted to
learn that he could now turn Warwick, whose abilities he had learnt
to respect, against his master--anything that would breed trouble in
England would keep his enemy occupied at home. The King's first orders
to his officers were to allow Warwick to fit out his ships, give him a
supply of money, and send him off to England as quickly as possible.
But the narrow seas were too well watched. Charles the Bold, irritated
at Warwick's capture of his merchantmen, had collected a great fleet
of seventy sail, which swept the Channel and watched the mouth of the
Seine.
The enforced delay in Warwick's departure allowed time for a new idea
to ripen in the French King's restless brain. Warwick had now broken
hopelessly with King Edward; they could never trust each other again.
Why therefore should not the Earl reconcile himself to the cause of
Lancaster? No sooner was the idea formed than Louis proceeded to send
for Queen Margaret out of her refuge in the duchy of Bar, and to lay
his plan before her and the Earl, when they all met at Angers in the
middle of July.
The scheme was at first sight revolting to both parties. There was so
much blood and trouble between them that neither could stomach the
proposal. If Margaret could bring herself to forget that Warwick had
twice driven her out of England, and had led her husband in ignominy to
the Tower, she could not pardon the man who, in his moment of wrath,
had stigmatised herself as an adulteress and her son as a bastard.[16]
Warwick, on the other hand, if he could forgive the plot against
his own life which the Queen had hatched in 1459, could not bear to
think of meeting the woman who had sent his gray-haired father to the
scaffold in cold blood on the day after Wakefield. King Louis asked
each party to forget their whole past careers, and sacrifice their
dearest hatreds to the exigencies of the moment.
If Warwick and Queen Margaret had been left to themselves, it is most
improbable that they would ever have come to an agreement. But between
them Louis went busily to and fro, for his unscrupulous mind was
perfectly unable to conceive that passion or sentiment could override
an obvious political necessity. Gradually the two parties were brought
to state their objections to the King's scheme, the first step towards
the commencement of negotiations. Warwick was the first to yield; the
Queen took far longer to persuade. The Earl, she said, had been the
cause of all the trouble that had come on herself, her husband, and
her son. She could not pardon him. Moreover, his pardon would lose
her more friends than he could bring to her. Warwick's answer was
straightforward. He owned all the harm he had done to her and hers.
But the offence, he said, had come first from her who had plotted
evil against him which he had never deserved. What he had done had
been done solely in his own defence. But now the new King had broken
faith with him, and he was bound to him no longer. If Margaret would
forgive him, he would be true to her henceforth; and for that the King
of France would be his surety. Louis gave his word, praying the Queen
to pardon the Earl, to whom, he said, he was more beholden than to any
other man living.[17]
The Queen so pressed, and urged beside by the counsellors of her father
King Réné, agreed to pardon Warwick. Louis then broached the second
point in his scheme. The new alliance, he urged, should be sealed by
a marriage; the Prince of Wales was now seventeen and the Lady Anne,
Warwick's younger daughter, sixteen. What match could be fairer or more
hopeful?
But to this the Queen would not listen. She could find a better match
for her son, she said; and she showed them a letter lately come from
Edward offering him the hand of the young Princess Elizabeth.[18]
Louis, however, was quietly persistent, and in the end the Queen
yielded this point also. On August 4th she met Warwick in the Church of
St. Mary at Angers, and there they were reconciled; the Earl swearing
on a fragment of the true cross that he would cleave to King Henry's
quarrel, the Queen engaging to treat the Earl as her true and faithful
subject, and never to make him any reproach for deeds gone by. The Earl
placed his daughter in the Queen's hands, saying that the marriage
should take place only when he had won back England for King Henry, and
then departed for the coast to make preparations for getting his fleet
to sea.
One person alone was much vexed at the success of Louis' scheme. The
Duke of Clarence had no wish to see his father-in-law reconciled to
the house of Lancaster, for he had been speculating on the notion
that if Warwick drove out Edward he himself would become King. But
wandering exiles must take their fortune as it comes, and Clarence had
to be contented with Queen Margaret's promise that his name should be
inserted in the succession after that of her son, when she and her
husband came to their own again. The Prince was a healthy promising
lad, and the prospect offered was hopelessly remote; Clarence began to
grow discontented, and to regret that he had ever placed himself under
Warwick's guidance. At this juncture his brother sent him a message
from England, through a lady attending on the Duchess, praying him
not to wreck the fortunes of his own family by adhering to the house
of Lancaster, and bidding him remember the hereditary hatred that
lay between them. Edward offered his brother a full pardon. Clarence
replied by promising to come over to the King so soon as he and Warwick
should reach England. Of all these negotiations Warwick suspected not a
word.
Edward was so overjoyed by his brother's engagement to wreck the Earl's
invasion, that he laughed at Charles of Burgundy for squandering money
in keeping a fleet at sea to intercept Warwick, and declared that what
he most wished was to see his adversary safely landed on English soil,
to be dealt with by himself.
He had his wish soon enough. In September the equinoctial gales caught
the Burgundian fleet and blew it to the four winds, some of the vessels
being driven as far as Scotland and Denmark. This left the coast clear
for Warwick, who had long been waiting to put to sea. The Earl had
already taken his precautions to make his task easy. A proclamation,
signed by himself and Clarence, had been scattered all over England by
willing hands. It said that the exiles were returning "to set right and
justice to their places, and to reduce and redeem for ever the realm
from its thraldom;" but no mention was made either of Edward or Henry
in it, a curious fact which seems to point out that the Lancastrian
alliance was not to be avowed till the last moment. But more useful
than many proclamations was the message which the Earl sent into the
North Country; he prayed his kinsman Fitzhugh to stir up Yorkshire and
draw the King northward, as he had done before, when he and Coniers
worked the rebellion of Robin of Redesdale.
Fitzhugh had no difficulty in rousing the Neville tenants about
Middleham; and Edward, as Warwick expected, no sooner heard of this
insurrection than he hurried to put it down, taking with him his
brother Richard of Gloucester, Scales, Hastings, Say, and many more
of his most trusted barons, with a good part of the army that was
disposable to resist a landing on the South Coast. Near York he was
to be met by Montagu, who had adhered to him for the past year in
spite of his brother's rebellion. But the King had paid Montagu
badly for his loyalty. He had taken from him the Percy lands in
Northumberland, and restored them to the young heir of that ancient
house, compensating, as he thought, the dispossessed Neville by making
him a marquis, and handing him over some of Warwick's confiscated
northern estates. Montagu complained in secret that "he had been given
a marquisate, and a pie's nest to maintain it withal," and was far from
being so contented as the King supposed.
On September 25th Warwick landed unopposed at Dartmouth. In his company
was not only Clarence but several of the great Lancastrian lords who
had been living in exile--Jasper of Pembroke, Oxford, and many more.
They brought with them about two thousand men, of whom half were French
archers lent by Louis. The moment that the invaders landed, Warwick
and Clarence declared themselves, by putting forth a proclamation in
favour of King Henry. Devon and Somerset had always been Lancastrian
strongholds, and the old retainers of the Beauforts and of Exeter came
in by hundreds to meet their exiled lords. In a few days Warwick had
ten thousand men, and could march on London; the King was at Doncaster,
and his lieutenants in the South could make no stand without him. A
little later Warwick's own Midland and Wiltshire tenants joined him,
the Earl of Shrewsbury raised the Severn valley in his aid, and all
Western England was in his hands.
Meanwhile King Edward, who had up to this moment mismanaged his
affairs most hopelessly, moved south by Doncaster and Lincoln, with
Montagu and many other lords in his train. On October 6th he lay in
a fortified manor near Nottingham with his bodyguard, while his army
occupied all the villages round about. There, early in the morning,
while he still lay in bed, Alexander Carlisle, the chief of his
minstrels, and Master Lee, his chaplain, came running into his chamber,
to tell him there was treachery in his camp. Montagu and other lords
were riding down the ranks of his army crying, "God save King Henry!"
The men were cheering and shouting for Warwick and Lancaster, and no
one was showing any signs of striking a blow for the cause of York.
Edward rose in haste, drew up his bodyguard to defend the approach
of the manor where he lay, and sent scouts to know the truth of the
report. They met Montagu marching against them, and fled back to
say that the rumour was all too true. Then Edward with his brother
Gloucester, Hastings his chamberlain, Say, and Scales, and their
immediate following, took horse and fled. They reached Lynn about eight
hundred strong, seized some merchantmen and two Dutch carvels which
lay in the harbour, and set sail for the lands of Burgundy. Buffeted
by storms and chased by Hanseatic pirates, they ran their ships ashore
near Alkmaar, and sought refuge with Louis of Gruthuyse, Governor of
Holland. King, lords, and archers alike had escaped with nothing but
what they bore on their backs; Edward himself could only pay the master
of the ship that carried him by giving him the rich gown lined with
martens' fur that he had worn in his flight.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: This plan, as Lingard astutely observes, may have two
meanings. Either, as we said above, it was a ratification of peace with
the Nevilles, or--and this is quite possible--it was intended to draw
Montagu apart from his brothers, by giving him a special interest in
Edward's prosperity.]
[Footnote 15: _E.g._ Waurin makes Ranby Howe, the muster-place of the
insurgents, into Tabihorch, and Lancashire into Lantreghier.]
[Footnote 16: Foreign writers record that Warwick used this language to
the legate Coppini in 1460.]
[Footnote 17: All this comes from the invaluable "Manner of the dealing
of the Earl of Warwick at Angiers," printed in the _Chronicle of the
White Rose_.]
[Footnote 18: This is a not impossible tale. Edward, fearing Warwick's
alliance to the Queen, might hope to separate them by offering
Margaret's son the ultimate succession to the throne. For he himself
having no male heir, the crown would go with his eldest daughter
Elizabeth.]